


ready to shape the scheme of things

by equestrianstatue



Category: A Knight's Tale (2001)
Genre: F/M, Identity Porn, Instructional Handjobs, Instructional Kissing, Instructional Poetry, M/M, Missing Scene, role play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 03:36:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18160976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue
Summary: “It would be easier if you could just come with me every time I have to see her,” Will says. “If only you were always just over my shoulder, telling me what to say.”





	ready to shape the scheme of things

“It would be easier if you could just come with me every time I have to see her,” Will says. He is lying flat on his back over a couple of bales of straw, his legs dangling over the edge, staring up through the gaps in the thatch of the barn roof. The rose he has been carrying all evening knocks contemplatively against his upturned chin. “If only you were always just over my shoulder, telling me what to say.”

Geoffrey smiles to himself. “I think you’d very quickly tire of that, and I think she might tire of it even sooner. Besides, you wouldn’t need me. The letter you wrote was beautiful.”

“The letter you wrote.”

“Barely.”

“And Roland, and Kate, and Wat. Jesu, I’ll have to have all of you hidden in the corner of every room, throwing me suggestions.”

Geoffrey smiles again. With his letter to Jocelyn written but not yet sent, Will has spent the evening exultant and nervous by turns, spinning dizzily on the thrill of a courageous throw of the dice. Geoffrey is sympathetic. The others have left to find something in the way of supper, but Will, too fractious for an appetite, clearly wanted to stay put. Geoffrey, who appears at some point to have set himself up as an entirely unwarranted expert on matters of the heart, has stayed with him and let him talk, and eaten three apples. Besides, there is wine from Bordeaux still in their baggage, and it is very good.

Geoffrey refills his cup, and says, “I think you might find that harder work than simply talking to her yourself.”

“I doubt it,” says Will. He swings his body upwards, so that he is sat straddling the straw-bales instead, and holds his own cup out to Geoffrey to be refilled too. “It’s not so bad, when she’s not actually here. With the letter, there was time to think about what to say. But I stand in front of her and open my mouth, and— ” Will makes an expressive, surprisingly funny gesture with his mouth and hands: his words drying up, becoming a stale, spitting dust. Geoffrey laughs at him, and Will laughs too.

“Don’t over-worry,” Geoffrey says. “You love her, and that’s what matters. It’s very well to speak prettily, but whatever you say to her can’t help but be the truth.”

“But she deserves better. She deserves poetry.”

“And you will give it to her, through the love written in your eyes and the loyalty written in your heart.”

Will throws his hands up. “You see! I couldn’t even have said that.”

“Oh, better not to. Listen, if she really loves you, you need only to speak simply. It will be all she needs to hear. ‘My Lady Jocelyn, it gives me very great pleasure to see you again.’ There— no flourishes, but true.”

“My Lady Jocelyn, it gives me very great pleasure to see you again,” Will mutters, as if learning a prayer by rote, a soft frown creasing his brow.

“No, don’t try to learn it. Just say it and mean it. It doesn’t matter if the words aren’t exactly the same.”

Will clears his throat. He looks Geoffrey in the eye, inclines his head, and says, “My Lady Jocelyn, it gives me such pleasure to see you again.”

“Yes, exactly. Perfect. I believe you.”

Will opens his mouth again, freezes, and then shakes his head. “And then what?”

“Well, then she will reply, and give you something to work with. ‘Sir Ulrich, that I may bring you pleasure is pleasure in itself to me.’” Will’s mouth twitches, hardens a little— oh, at the name. The poor boy. Geoffrey adds, “But to see my hunter once again brings me pleasure above all.”

Will is nodding slightly, listening, visibly groping for an appropriate response. Strange, Geoffrey thinks, how we feel so keenly the absence of whatever we lack, but have so little regard for what comes most naturally. Will, who has presumably met few flatterers and even fewer looking-glasses, wears his beauty lightly enough that Geoffrey suspects he has no idea that he possesses it. Somebody who looks as much a knight as he does, and can prove himself so unquestionably in the field, ought to be able to bend the world to their will by determination alone. Charm and loquaciousness, the secondary arts, are usually reserved for those with damningly few other options. And yet Will clutches at Geoffrey’s scraps of poetry, his lazy turns of phrase, as if they are the key to unlocking some higher plane of understanding. But they are only words, after all.

“Thank you,” Will says, eventually, and then fixes Geoffrey with a look of slight panic.

Geoffrey grins. “For what do you thank me? I have not yet performed you any service.”

Will swallows, and then he says, “For coming to Paris. I wrote to you, and you have answered. I longed to see you, and you came. I would ask you for no service more.”

“Good,” says Geoffrey, softly. “Very good.”

“It’s true, if she comes.”

“I know. That’s why it’s good.”

Geoffrey sits up a little straighter and rubs the back of his neck. Jocelyn, from what he can glean of her, is clever and direct, but not devoid of playfulness. She will take pity on Will’s leaden tongue, of course, but she won’t leave him entirely untried. Her own beauty, which one imagines she has been taught to consider a burden, has been fashioned instead into a weapon and an offering by turns, and it seems well-matched by her wit. Geoffrey considers her next move.

“If you would ask nothing else of me,” he says, “then I may as well go.”

“No,” says Will, but he doesn’t sound worried, only sincere. “Please stay.”

“What should I stay for?”

“You have come all this way. We have so much to talk about.”

“Do we?” says Geoffrey, trying not to smile again. “Such as?”

Will twirls the stem of the rose awkwardly between his fingers. “How was your journey?”

Geoffrey waves his hand. “I wouldn’t get into that. You’ll struggle with small talk, and she’ll have little time for it. What do you actually want to talk to her about?”

“Love. Destiny. Marriage. But as soon as she arrives…?”

“I see. Well, perhaps there is a middle ground. Stay on the theme, but without quite asking for her hand before her maid has finished unpacking.” Geoffrey puts down his cup, and pushes himself to his feet. He clears his throat. Will is looking up at him from the straw, and Geoffrey opens his hand in his direction. “All these weeks, it is the thought of you that has spurred me forward. I have travelled so many miles, ridden against so many opponents, and collected so many prizes, but it is no longer glory that I am chasing. I do it all for you.”

“Yes. Yes. That’s right.” Will is nodding fervently. He, too, pushes himself to his feet. Then his face falls. “But the last time I saw her…” He pushes his hair back from his forehead, and faces Geoffrey across two feet of straw-covered dirt, looking unhappy. “So you are still just a boy with a horse and a stick. Why would I want that?”

“Because that is no longer all I am,” answers Geoffrey, immediately. Will’s eyes lighten. “Riding, jousting, competing— they are not my masters. They are my servants. My master, my guiding light, my north star… is you. If you asked me to throw my livelihood away tomorrow, I would do it gladly.”

“So do it,” says Will, without pause. “Give it all up. Never enter another tournament again.” Then he stops, and the hand that is still clutching the rose drops to his side. “No. She would never ask that of me.”

“Wouldn’t she?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you do love her as much as you say, William, you must be prepared to prove it to her. You must be ready for her to ask anything of you. How else can she trust you? Think how many men will have sworn their love to her, and think how many of them will have lied.”

Will’s head has dropped forward, listening. After a moment, he raises it again. His eyes are clear, deep, hopelessly sincere. “I love you,” he says. His voice is low but perfectly audible. “I love you more than anyone I have ever known or anything I have ever seen. You make me feel like twice myself. All I want is to remain by your side forever.”

Geoffrey breathes in, knocked a little backwards. The sheer and total honesty of it; the ease with with Will can access such a thing. “You do not lie.”

“Never.”

“Then I will be honest with you too. Your declaration of love is returned.”

Will sighs. The sharp suffusion of joy on his face is undisguisable, even here, with this scene entirely invented, surrounded by straw and animal feed and the night sky winking through the roof. Then, rather carefully, he reaches forward to take Geoffrey’s hand in his, bends down, and brings the hand to his mouth. He kisses the back of it, a dry, gentle pressure.

Then he straightens up and says, “Too forward?”

Will’s face is open, expectant, serious. His fingers are still curled gently against Geoffrey’s hand, which hangs mid-air between them. Geoffrey stares back at him. Will doesn’t play games with people: he has neither the head nor the heart for it. The plainness of his dealings is exactly what makes people trust him so completely. If Geoffrey has been enjoying, a little, the strange slippage between this barn and some high-vaulted room in Paris, between the parts they are born to play and others they might briefly inhabit, he has been enjoying it safe in the knowledge that the same idea has not crossed Will’s mind. Or so he has been assuming.

“No,” murmurs Geoffrey. “That’s fine.”

“And then what?”

Geoffrey worries at the end of his tongue with his teeth before he replies. He wonders if he has been a bad influence on the boy. He wonders how terrible it would be to be a worse one.

“Then,” he says, finding his mouth is surprisingly dry, “if she stands just so, and tilts her head just so, and looks at you just so….”

Will swallows visibly. Lips parted, he moves closer, until they are within breathing distance of one another.

“Then you may kiss her.”

Will says, voice grating rather tightly from his throat, “Like I mean it?”

“Of course.”

The kiss, when it comes, is brief and brushing. Will’s soft lips press against Geoffrey’s, rather reverently. Geoffrey closes his eyes and lets the warmth of it run through him. Will’s hand, still holding his, squeezes for a moment at his fingers. Then he lets go.

Geoffrey had thought, to begin with, that by rights he ought to find Will a little dull. A good man, and young, and unwise, and fixated on horses and glory. There were plenty such young men the whole world over. Only there had been a flash of something far more interesting, when Will had stood over Geoffrey’s body by the roadside outside Rouen, looking determined and desperate, and pulled out his knife. By God, the world might be stacked against him, but he would not let it remain so, if there were one small, strange chance that he could do something about it. Will might be the very image of a knight when he rides into the lists, but underneath his armour he is also wildly stubborn, and governed by his passions, and truculent when he has been slighted. His soul is wrought of gold, but he is wholly, intoxicatingly human.

Their mouths part. Will’s forehead touches Geoffrey’s own. Geoffrey feels briefly quite untethered. He is flooded by warring impulses: a clean, clear rush of love, in its purest and most transitory sense, and a muddier wash of desire. He cannot, for the moment, navigate either of them sensibly, but he lets his forehead remain against Will’s, and without thought, he rests one hand just above Will’s waist, his thumb settling gently in the dip of his hipbone. A connecting, anchoring touch.

But Will takes it as— he does not know what, but seconds later Will is kissing him again, and this time without a hint of restraint. The force of it is indescribable. Geoffrey has watched him break lances on opponent after opponent, and wonders if it feels anything like this. There is no art to it, no design, simply the heat of Will’s mouth and the grip of his hands and the shaking, ungoverned enormity of his want. Geoffrey is backed into the wooden pillar behind them. He is not non-complicit. Somewhere in the rush of it all he puts his tongue into Will’s mouth, which opens for him as easily as his heart, warm and needing and hopeful.

Will stops, and pulls a fraction backwards. He is flushed, and his bright eyes flicker over Geoffrey’s face, questioning, searching for approval. The rose has fallen at some point to the floor at their feet.

Geoffrey can barely draw breath. “You can’t kiss her like that,” he manages, at last.

Will looks stricken. “Why not?”

Why not indeed? Geoffrey steadies himself. “Too much, too soon. You must hold back a little.”

“But it’s honest. I love her beyond reason, I desire her more than anything, I— ” Will breaks off, frustrated, waves his hand. “Even if I cannot speak it, there it is. Everything I feel. Why should I not tell her? I cannot pretend otherwise. I don’t _want_ to pretend otherwise. I’m sick of lying to her.”

“You’re not lying to her.”

“Aren’t I?”

This old chestnut. Geoffrey rests his head against the pillar behind him. “Lots of knights compete under another name. The name isn’t important. It’s not as if you’ve stolen someone else’s identity. Sir Ulrich has only ever been you.”

“But that’s exactly it. He hasn’t. My body, maybe, but in Kate’s armour, in Roland’s clothes, on the horse that Wat cares for. Speaking your words. That’s Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein.” Will says the name with its inflection rising, just slightly, a soft pattern of Geoffrey roaring it into the air.

“And your heart,” Geoffrey says. “Don’t forget that.”

Will sighs. Geoffrey puts a hand on his shoulder.

“So you must keep just a little in reserve. It’s not pretence, only… promise.”

Will’s tongue wets his lips. He nods, and looks down, before he looks back up at Geoffrey again, and says, “Show me.”

They have moved already, Geoffrey supposes, far beyond wherever the fork in the road was that would have led them anywhere other than here. As such, he barely pauses to consider what he is about to do. He leans forward quite as carefully as Will had done the first time, so that he can smell Will’s skin and the wine on his breath, but the kiss is much more precisely delivered. Enough restraint to be decorous, but enough heat to be obvious. An almost-chaste meeting of lips, the barest flick of his tongue between them, the brush of his fingers against the back of Will’s neck. All gone in moments.

“You see?” Geoffrey says. He feels as though some part of himself is plunging, unchecked, towards his feet, towards the centre of the earth. Will is gazing at him, breathing a little heavily. “You must leave her wanting more.”

Will nods. “Yes, I see.” And then he puts his hand to Geoffrey’s cheek and returns the kiss once again, studied, copied. Not badly copied. Geoffrey can still feel the mass of quivering, balled-up energy behind it, but that is where it is— behind it, not right there against his mouth. Geoffrey closes his eyes again.

After this, they are quiet for a moment. Outside there is the cry of some night-bird. A horse in the next barn over snorts and kicks against the wall of its stable. Will is still stood before Geoffrey when he opens his eyes, close and warm and only a little unsteady, and Geoffrey looks at him, and wonders what will happen now. It doesn’t seem entirely impossible that Will is about to say: _Well, this has been very helpful, thank you very much, goodnight_ , and go to bed. It doesn’t seem entirely impossible that Geoffrey himself will say: _Well, I hope some of that was useful, see you tomorrow_ , and go and put his head into the nearest barrel of wine or, Lord providing, his prick into the nearest willing hand.

But then Will reaches forward across the small gap between them and takes Geoffrey’s hand once more. He lifts it upwards, his thumb running just above the knuckles of Geoffrey’s fingers. Somewhere in the deliberate delicacy of that touch it is clear that the game is not ended.

Geoffrey says, “Yes, that was much better.”

Will looks pleased. “I want— ” he starts, and then stops. “How far may I go?”

“Well,” says Geoffrey. “You might ask her that very question.”

“I am asking.”

“Perhaps…” Geoffrey raises their joined hands, brings them up to the place where his own shirt opens, where the base of his throat meets his collarbone. Will’s hand settles carefully there, his warm fingers splaying out against Geoffrey’s skin.

Geoffrey puts his own hands on Will’s hips, and motions him inwards. Will comes at once, and they kiss again. It is still light and slow, but a little more easy, a little more comfortable. Will is getting the hang of it.

“You will be able to tell,” Geoffrey murmurs when they break apart, “what is pleasing her. If her skin is warm, if her breath comes quickly, if her breasts are heavy— ” Will’s hand slips downwards, either by instruction or coincidence, under the cloth of Geoffrey’s open shirt, so that his palm is across one side of Geoffrey’s chest, his fingers rubbing against one nipple. He circles it, pinches it gently between his finger and thumb, and God preserve him, Geoffrey is almost painfully aroused. “If she grows wet— ” Will makes an abrupt, keening noise, and presses his hips briefly forward. “Or,” Geoffrey says, “she might just tell you.”

“Oh, God,” Will says quietly, “if she would let me…”

Geoffrey is pressed once again against the pillar, but this is in part because his hands have slipped around Will’s waist, down to the curve of his behind, and he is pulling Will even closer. Will kisses him yet again, very earnestly, but a little harder this time, a little more desperate. Geoffrey cannot very well complain. For a moment, he can feel Will’s prick pressing against his thigh. Oh, God, if she would let him… Then Will’s hand slips out from under Geoffrey’s shirt. It moves to his waist, and brushes against the soft skin of his stomach, before it rests a little tentatively over his groin, cupping his stiffening cock through his trousers.

Geoffrey supposes he ought to regain a semblance of control over the situation. “But here,” he says, attempting to strike some vague note of humour, “the parallel ends.”

Will’s mouth is very close to his cheek. His hand remains where it is. After a moment, in a surprisingly philosophical tone, he says, “Does it?”

“Well. After a fashion. The mechanics, at least.”

“But the principles,” Will murmurs. He increases the pressure of his palm, just a little, so that Geoffrey’s cock twitches against it. Geoffrey breathes out, sharply. “If she likes something, then— ” He does it again, more assuredly. “I have only to pay attention.”

“Yes,” Geoffrey agrees, but now Will is squeezing his cock, feeling him through his clothes, and then he is fumbling with the laces of his trousers, and then he is feeling him inside his clothes. Geoffrey opens his mouth, and for an unprecedented moment, no sound comes out.

Will says, grinning, “Do you think I could make her lose her words?”

“You could try,” breathes Geoffrey.

There is the odd sensation that they might be alone in the world. The moonlight is dappled so barrenly and picturesquely across the floor of the barn, peeking through the cracks in the door, and when one is looking at Will it is so easy to think of nobody else. But then there is so much baggage strewn across the room, and if one actually pays attention, the sounds of ongoing life in Nantes do not come from so very far away. Geoffrey has a sudden, penetrating vision of the barn door swinging open behind them, of Wat or Roland or Kate or all three presented with a vision of love’s thoroughly undignified embrace. Will is tugging his cock breathlessly, studiously, his hand warm and firm, Geoffrey panting in relief, one hand planted against Will’s shoulder. Oh, Lord, let them come in if they must. At least he’s still dressed.

“Like this?” Will is saying, “Or…?”

“Slower,” Geoffrey says, his eyes shut, his head turned upwards, baring his throat— hah! his throat, above his breasts— and Will is listening, slowing, stroking him with unbearable precision, until Geoffrey feels that his whole body is stretched out along one quivering line of pleasure and promise. “Don’t rush her, don’t— ”

The invocation of Jocelyn makes Will catch his breath, and his hand tightens, suddenly. “Oh, fuck,” he breathes, hot against Geoffrey’s neck, and then Geoffrey is tripping and choking and coming, hard.

When Geoffrey drags himself back into the reality of the night around him, Will is watching him, eyes wide and attentive. Geoffrey draws in a long breath, and then smiles. He lifts a hand to Will’s chin, brushes his thumb over Will’s bottom lip, and then leans in to kiss him again, languid and slightly sloppy. He can feel the thrumming tension in Will’s body, even as he tries to return the kiss in the manner it is given.

“I do not doubt," Geoffrey says, "that eventually you will be rewarded for your patience.”

“I would wait,” Will says, “as long as she wanted, if she wanted, if she asked me— ”

“I’m sure.” Geoffrey presses a final small, fond kiss to the hinge of Will’s jaw and reaches forward. Will gasps as soon as Geoffrey’s fingers touch him, shoves his own hand down to pull open the fastenings of his trousers, and pushes immediately into Geoffrey’s palm. It is easy to forget he’s not all that much more than a boy. He _has_ been patient. Geoffrey says, “Oh, Sir Hunter,” Will shudders so violently he almost falls over, and he comes in Geoffrey’s hand in under a minute.

Afterwards, Will laughs, slightly incredulously. He looks very flushed and pleased and only a little embarrassed. “So do you think it’ll go like that?” he asks.

“Word for word, I’d have thought, yes.”

Will shakes his head. He wipes his hands vaguely on the thighs of his trousers. “Honestly, I do think it would go better if you were there. Even if it does turn out anything like that.” His smile has a hint of mischief in it. “Especially if it does. You should probably be there to help.”

“No,” says Geoffrey, attempting, unsuccessfully, not to picture this. “I really don’t think I should.”

“Your loss.”

It is indeed. Geoffrey watches Will righting himself a little, pushing his hair out of his face, and then draining the wine still left in his cup. When he sets it down again, it is almost as if nothing has happened, as if any sin that could be attached to the last quarter-hour has simply rolled off him. By God, these young, beautiful people. Was Geoffrey ever one of them? He doesn’t remember having been. He re-laces his trousers.

“Do you think it really will work?” Will asks, quietly, and Geoffrey looks up at him again. “The letter, I mean. Will she come?”

The question is so simple, asked with such genuine trust, as if Geoffrey might really know the answer. As if he really knows anything about anyone at all. Well, perhaps he does. “Yes,” he says. “I think she will.”

Will smiles at him again, the ease of his happiness spilling out across his face. “I wouldn’t have stood a chance with her, without you, you know. I do mean that.”

“Of course you would. Just not a very good one.”

Will snorts, cuffs him gently on the arm. Then he returns to his pile of baggage, looking, presumably, for something to curl up to sleep on. It’s late. The others will be back to sleep too, soon enough. Geoffrey rubs his hands over his face. He wonders how right Will might be.

“Well, what else am I for?” Geoffrey says, as much to himself as to Will. “If not to illuminate what God has already put in front of us?”

“Shouting,” Will says, still bent over his bags. “Mainly.”

“Yes,” Geoffrey agrees. “I’m very good at that.”

When the others do return, close on an hour later, Will is sleeping soundly on a spread of fur, sprawled half on his front, his head turned to one side. Geoffrey is lying awake, a short way across the floor, the stub of a candle spilling a little light over his pen and ink as he scratches quietly at a scrap of parchment. He raises a finger to his lips as Wat stumbles through the door, which earns him an intake of breath that would presumably have preceded a linguistically fascinating pronouncement of insult, but then Wat follows Geoffrey’s eyes to Will, and he closes his mouth.

“Like a baby,” Wat mutters instead, softly, without derision. “He’s not even got to ride to Rouen tomorrow.”

“Hasn’t he?” whispers Kate. “You’ve only mentioned it, what, thirty or forty times?”

“I still think we should send this one,” Wat says, nodding to Geoffrey. “What if she asks me questions about what’s in the letter? What if she asks me to read it to her?”

“She won’t,” says Roland. “She wouldn’t mistake you for someone who had a clue what was going on.”

“Oh, _come_ on— ”

“Shh, shh, shh.”

“You _could_ go with him,” Kate says, voice low, as she lays out her own blanket near to Geoffrey’s. “You did write a lot of it. You can make sure she reads it properly. And that he doesn’t lose it on the way there.”

“He won’t,” Geoffrey says. “And she will. Besides, once the writing is done, it is out of one’s hands— literally. Whatever she reads in that letter will be what she wants to read. There’s nothing more I can do.”

“Yes,” says Kate. “But I think she likes you more than Wat.”

“I don’t think that’s saying much.”

Kate laughs, quietly. They both watch Wat’s stifled outrage run its brief course, and Roland setting an old cartwheel against the barn door to keep out thieves; and then the two of them settling down for sleep, so that they are all four ranged around Will, like rays stretching out from the sun. On a whim, Geoffrey scribbles this thought down. Then he blows out the candle.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, you can also reblog it [on tumblr](https://justlikeeddie.tumblr.com/post/183553031767/ready-to-shape-the-scheme-of-things)!
> 
> I also talked a little bit about this story [here](https://justlikeeddie.tumblr.com/post/188023877352/tell-me-anything-at-all-about-ready-to-shape-the).


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